Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/223

 27. Do not think of what are absent as though they were now existing, but ponder on the most fortunate of what you have got, and on account of them remind yourself how they would have been missed, if they had not been here. Take heed at the same time not to accustom yourself to overvalue the things you are thus contented to have, so as to be troubled if at any time they are not here.

28. Withdraw into yourself: the reasonable governing self is by its nature content with its own just actions and the tranquillity it thus secures.

29. Wipe away the impress of imagination. Stay the impulse which is drawing you. Define the time which is present. Recognize what is happening to yourself or another. Divide and separate the event into its causal and material aspects. Dwell in thought upon your last hour. Leave the wrong done by another where the wrong arose.

30. Direct your thought to what is being said. Let your mind gain an entrance into what is occurring and who is producing it.

31. Make yourself glad in simplicity, self-respect, and indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. Democritus says: 'All (sensibles) are ruled by law, but in reality the elements alone exist.' Enough for you to remember that 'all exist by law'; now is there very little else.

32. On Death: either dispersal, if we are composed of atoms; or if we are a living unity, either extinction or a change of abode.

33. On Pain: what we cannot bear removes us from life; what lasts can be borne. The understanding, too, preserves its own tranquillity by abstraction, and the governing self does not grow worse; but it is for the parts which are injured by the pain, if they can, to declare it. 131